ESTATE agents selling the top-floor flat at 22 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington, are unlikely to use the words of its most famous former resident in their brochure. Virginia Woolf described the six-storey terraced property in which she was born and lived for 23 years as “the house of all the deaths” and the “cage” from which she longed to escape.

Her half-sister Stella, her father Sir Leslie Stephen and mother Julia died here. In those Victorian days the curtains were black, the walls were black — the house was dull and dreary.

The most prosaic of Woolf’s fans believe that the gloomy and oppressive air remains at the house. “The attic stairs leading to a luxury flat in what was once Sir Leslie’s study can seem bare and chill,” wrote one. “All the negative aspects of Virginia’s childhood that caused her to be over-sensitive, nervous and tortured in later life are still impregnated into the walls and foundations of 22 Hyde Park Gate.”

These are hardly words to persuade buyers to part with £1.5 million for the two-bedroom apartment that now fills Sir Leslie’s huge study and the attic above. They are hardly fair comment either. The attic stairs have been replaced by a lift and the new penthouse apartment is far lighter and brighter than the rooms that haunted Woolf until she killed herself in 1941.

The most ambitious alteration made by Chris Clayton, a developer who bought the two-storey shell four years ago, is to the attic room, which was added by Sir Leslie after he bought the house in the 1870s with a £489 mortgage. Clayton tore off the slate roof and created a new one in lead, using the shape of the old Dutch gables outside and inside to give the 30ft-long room a sensuous, curvy ceiling.

The attic room has a German oak floor and sunken blue halogen lighting as well as English oak cupboards, one of which contains wiring for a state-of-the-art media centre.

Three pairs of French windows open on to a decked terrace with an outside shower and views over the Albert Hall and West London.

In the kitchen, a rare African hardwood, wenge, with a horizontal grain, is used in the cupboard doors, and the work surfaces are in black granite. The white goods are all Smeg.

The open-plan living and dining rooms were once Sir Leslie’s study — a room which Virginia, who was educated sporadically by her father, both loved and hated. “Think how I was brought up: no school, mooning about alone among my father’s books, never any chance to pick up all that goes on in schools — throwing balls, ragging, slang, vulgarities, scenes, jealousy, ” she wrote.

But the books led to her love of writing, and each Friday night she and her seven siblings produced their own newspaper in which everyday events were recorded. These were later used in her novels, and The Years is based on family life at the house in the 1880s.

At one point in the book, the fictional Pargiter family puts its house up for sale and a rather snooty estate agent comes to call. “The fact is,” he says, “our clients expect more lavatory accommodation nowadays.” There is no shortage of plumbing today and the bathroom includes a hydro spa.

Perhaps Woolf’s worst experience in the house was the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of Gerald, her half-brother. She relived her ordeal in A Sketch of the Past, which she wrote in 1939, two years before her suicide in Rodmell, East Sussex.

In 1904 Sir Leslie, the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, died and Virginia suffered a second mental breakdown. While she was recovering, the family moved to 46 Gordon Square in Bloomsbury. At this house, Virginia, her sister Vanessa (later Bell) and brothers entertained their friends, rather than their father’s. On Thursday nights Thoby invited his literary friends from university to the house and, to balance this, Vanessa started the Friday Club for artists. From these two meetings the Bloomsbury Group was born.

The house at Hyde Park Gate was sold in 1928 for £4,925. Although the street was also home to Winston Churchill, Lord Baden-Powell and President Herbert Hoover, the pilgrims who come to Hyde Park Gate want to see No 22. Most are students from Japan or America and are fans of Woolf’s writing, from Mrs Dalloway to A Room of One’s Own.

The lucky ones are invited inside by Jasmyne King-Leeder, who has owned a flat in the house for 25 years and is an expert on the author. “My living room was the main bedroom, where everyone was born or died,” she says. “Visitors can’t believe how light and cheerful it is.”

Flat 6, 22 Hyde Park Gate, is being sold for £1.5 million through Hobart Slater: 020-7581 8277

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